Mary Robinson quotes

“A culture is not an abstract thing. It is a living, evolving process. The aim is to push beyond standard-setting and asserting human rights to make those standards a living reality for people everywhere.”

“The aim of human rights, if I may borrow a term from engineering, is to move beyond the design and drawing-board phase, to move beyond thinking and talking about the foundations stones - to laying those foundation stones, inch by inch, together.”

“The fifth province is not anywhere here or there, north or south, east or west. It is a place within each of us. It is that place that is open to the other, that swinging door which allows us to venture out and others to venture in.”

“It's all the more necessary that China embraces the kind of political reform and opening up of society which will also be better for human rights and prepare China to ratify the covenant on civil and political rights,”